Harry Haun

In his five features to date, James Gray has rarely ventured far—if at all—from the five boroughs of his native New York City. “I’m genetically engineered to be an accountant in a shtetl,” glibly confesses the 48-year-old writer-director responsible for 'Little Odessa,' 'The Yards,' 'We Own the Night,' 'Two Lovers' and 'The Immigrant.'

When 'A Quiet Passion,' Terence Davies’ delicately nuanced and moving biography of reclusive poetess Emily Dickinson, was presented at 2016’s New York Film Festival, the British writer-director himself took to the stage of the Walter Reade Theater and told the packed house of his two hopes for the picture.

Yes, of course, Lone Scherfig has seen 'Day for Night,' François Truffaut’s throbbing heart of a valentine to the moviemaking art. Truth is, she can even quote Valentina Cortese’s famous line to her director when she forgets her lines in front of the cameras and blithely breaks into numbers: “I could always do that with Federico!”

If you were luckless enough to turn 16 in the spring of 1945 in Germany, your days were tragically, almost certainly marked. In the closing months of World War II, when Nazi manpower was dwindling, dying or deserting, innocent teenage males were desperately pitched into the hopeless fray like Fatherland sacrifices.

David Edelstein, film critic for 'New York' magazine, is known for picking his words well, and indeed he came up with some swell twists and turns of phrases to emcee the New York Film Critics Circle’s 82nd awards ceremony Jan. 3 at Tao Downtown in Manhattan.

Writer-director Mike Mills is living proof that filmmakers should never leave home. Two out of his three features are portraits of his parents, individually rather than collectively, and he stewed over both a total of 11 years before they were a reality.

Director Pablo Larraín was not the only double-dipper at this year’s New York Film Festival—Kristen Stewart had, in fact, three different entries—but the two features he presented there were ones that are now generating a genuine Oscar resonance....

A decade ago, 'For Your Consideration' offered up for Academy consideration the performance of one Catherine O’Hara, who played an actress named Marilyn Hack, then seeking—I mean, really, truly, actively seeking—Academy consideration for her performance of the dying matriarch in something called 'Home for Purim'—and, in that odd way of life-imitating-art-imitating-life, O’Hara was denied a nomination.